13 Responses

There is always the possibility that larger meteorites hit the Earth. Are the governments doing everything they could to develop the technology to detect and destroy these meteorites before they hit the ground?

Kyle

Just a bit of pedantry – only once it has hit the ground is such an object called a ‘meteorite’. While it is traveling through the atmosphere, it’s (and its tail are) known as a meteor, and previous to that a meteoroid. Though I’ve been hearing increasing calls for development of tech to combat such things, I don’t know of any government that has yet taken it up. There seem to be a few plausible methods bandied about, which is quite exciting, when you think about it. Never before has our species had the ability to deal with such a threat. It would be a shame if bickering or bureaucracy got in the way.

What I find interesting is that the Chair of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology (Lamar Smith – R – TX) has made a knee-jerk announcement today declaring we should have hearings on near-Earth asteroids, as if they are something just discovered today. This is the same Lamar Smith who has called climate Change scientists “alarmists.” I suppose maybe he’ll want hearings on that once we’re all underwater.

Might it not be easier and cost-effective to simply divert them into safer orbits? If you “blow up” a big rock, a fair quantity of its fragments can be expected to continue on the same general trajectory into the earth.

Frankly, we’re lucky this didn’t happen during the nuke-happy 1950s or 1960s. It might have triggered an all-out nuclear exchange between US and USSR. As it was, I suspect there was substantial communication on the “red telephone” yesterday morning between Mr. Putin & Mr. Obama.